The trouble with symbolic links

Posted Jul 8, 2022 21:12 UTC (Fri) by developer122 (guest, #152928)
In reply to: The trouble with symbolic links by Hello71
Parent article: The trouble with symbolic links

That doesn't actually sound like a problem.

If you're giving someone permission to make a simlink in a folder, then why care about any of it's parents? How is it different than regular wread/write access to the folder? (you'd be able to make/change files there anyway) Wouldn't altering/removing a parent break the simlink during lookup?

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The trouble with symbolic links

Posted Jul 8, 2022 23:12 UTC (Fri) by developer122 (guest, #152928) [Link]

Thinking about it some more, I suppose you could change the ownership of the containing folder, create *another* symlink to it, and then optionally change the ownership back. Then the file is effectively double-mapped. There might be some way around this by checking the ownership at runtime or some other extra checks or reference counters, but it definitely needs to be considered carefully.

I still don't see what the issue is with altering parent directories of the folder in question though, or what special capability symlinks add to that scenario.